


Haven't Got All Day

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mid-life Crisis, Real Life, brief creep factor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6236713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sarah was 15, she knew exactly what to think of the Goblin King, and how the story ended.  Now she's 30, and she doesn't know either of those things any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haven't Got All Day

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Path Between The Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/52357) by [Thia (Jennaria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia). 



> For thesilentpoet, who asked for a story about Jareth, in honor of David Bowie (may his name live forever). Instead, this is a story about Sarah, and growing up, and what happens after endings. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

At 30, she remembers Jareth all over again.

*

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen - most of Sarah's memories of high school are a jumble, with her ordinary life (taking care of Toby, homework, drama club, applying to college) mixed in with goblin-friends in places she's pretty sure they couldn't have actually been. She remembers Ludo helping to push Toby on the swing, and Toby giggling as he went higher than Sarah's head - or Sir Didymus growling over her history homework spread over the dining room table, because the textbook writers had certainly gotten it _all wrong_ , no honorable king would have behaved so, while Dad was fixing dinner in the next room - or Hoggle listening to her recite her monolog for tomorrow's audition, for the fifteenth time, and only rolling his eyes a little. 

They're not in any of her pictures, but they wouldn't be, would they. And she didn't write about them in her diary, mostly because she (still) suspected her step-mother of reading it. But she remembers them _there_ , along with odd faces peering at her out of the bushes as she walked to school, or whispers along the wall, and that barn owl always sitting in the tree outside her window.

She does have pictures of the owl. She actually got a prize for one, her first year in college. She stopped taking photos after that, because now she had proof. Proof of _what_ , she doesn't ask herself.

*

College is...honestly, she's not sure what she expected. In high school, they tell you that college is the best years of your life. Sarah finds them _useful_ , but maybe not the same kind of useful that her guidance counselor wants her to. She's already had to fend for herself in a hostile place, after all. It's just that in college, the goalposts move in a more figurative sense, not the literal shifts of the Labyrinth.

She gets into Emerson College in Boston. After two years, she transfers out to Mount Holyoke. Her stepmother worries this means she's coming out, switching to an all-women college like that, and her father asks if it's because of her mother, who was an Emerson alum. Her father's closer to the truth than her stepmother (although what she doesn't know about Sarah's sophomore year roommate won't hurt her), but neither of them are right. Living in the middle of the city feels wrong, somehow, that she can't put her finger on. "No chickens," she tells a friend once, who asks in confusion whether she grew up on a farm.

She makes herself forget why she's uneasy. Mostly. There's a reason she never dates blonds.

*

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five - finding a job, finding an apartment, finding out who she is as an adult when she's not defining herself against her mother, or her stepmother, or that thing she won't think about. She doesn't see her goblin-friends any more. She thinks Toby does. Sometimes he still looks up, higher than even Dad, and grins to himself.

She makes other friends. She falls in love. She falls out of love. She buys a house, with help from her dad: it's tiny and a fixer-upper, but all hers. She doesn't fix the house, because she finds someone who sweeps her off her feet and promises her everything.

Three months after her thirtieth birthday, she throws the ring back in his face, and goes back to her small house. She steps out of the car and looks around with a sigh. The bush by the front door has grown so she can barely see the front door anymore, the lawn flowers with a carpet of violets, and she just saw a squirrel run into her attic.

At least, she thinks it was a squirrel. Maybe it was something else small and furry and skittering.

For the first time in years, she remembers. For the first time in years, she consciously thinks about Jareth, King of the Goblins.

*

She's never been sure how much of her memories of the Labyrinth are real. Logically, it was all a dream. Hoggle looks like her old book-ends. She's pretty sure Toby still owns a stuffed doll exactly like Sir Didymus. And Jareth, as she remembers him, bears too striking a resemblance to Jeremy, her mother's boyfriend after she left Dad.

(Jeremy left her mother, during Sarah's sophomore year. Sarah knows, not from the tabloids, but because she got dozens of letters and phone calls and promises that her mother would find a show in Boston, they could star together, it would be _amazing_. When Sarah transferred to Mount Holyoke, the letters and phone calls petered out with depressing quickness.)

(Her ex has black hair. He was the most charming guy on earth, until he thought he had her totally wrapped up, and then he didn't bother any more. Sarah realizes, standing there in her driveway, that she's been running from the wrong thing - she was scared of repeating her mother's mistake, when she should have been afraid of repeating her father's.)

She's not sure Jareth is real. She's not sure she didn't imagine him, somewhere between day-dream and nightmare. She never asked Toby what he remembers.

She's not sure why it matters any more.

*

What does Jareth really look like? Once she stops trying to remember him as a Jeremy-alike, it's surprisingly hard to picture him clearly. Mis-matched eyes, she remembers that, all angular, more like a cat's than any kind of human. A messy mane of hair that she remembers both as lion's gold and bone white. A smile with teeth in it. Hands, warm and gentle on hers, even as his Labyrinth snarled and bit at her. Walking through her, cool as morning mist, in the Escher room.

She stood up to him, back then, fearless as only a teenager can be. "You have no power over me," she said, and thought it was a good thing. Maybe it was. It's dangerous, giving power to the wrong kind of person. 

She picks up the bags of groceries she brought with her, and heads into the house. As always, the key sticks in the lock. As always, she has to kick the door closed behind her, and kick it again to make sure it stays shut. As always, the refrigerator door wavers open when she pulls, then tries to shut on her the instant she turns her back. 

She turns around to get the cheese and put it away. She's in the process of turning back to the fridge when a blood-curdling screech from outside makes her jump, drop the cheese, and freeze in place.

The screech repeats - shorter this time, not as terrifying. She leaves the cheese on the floor - it's wrapped in plastic, it's fine - and goes to the window to peer outside. A barn owl, with its familiar heart-shaped face, sits on the tree over her car, blinking in the late afternoon sun. It screeches one more time, then takes wing off toward the deeper woods.

Sarah watches it go, then shakes her head and turns back around, kneeling down to pick up the cheese.

It's not there. It was on the floor, right next to the counter. But it's gone. 

She kneels down, checks on the floor, just in case. All the while, she remembers, the night it happened, the party that nobody could hear, and the visit afterwards. _Careful, Sarah. We won't wait forever._ It's impossible. It wasn't real.

When she stands up, she abandons her groceries on the counter for now, and picks up her phone. She's still got a signal, which she finds reassuring - at least she hasn't become the heroine in some bad horror movie while she wasn't looking. It's the work of a moment to dial out.

Her father's the one who answers the phone, so she spends a few minutes chatting with him, light surface stuff: yes, she's doing fine, the job's still great, she's at her house, just putting away groceries now. Her stepmother isn't home. But Toby is, and Sarah's very casual about asking to talk to him.

How are you doing? School okay? How about your friends? Any luck finding that summer job? And oh yes, there's a barn owl here, I just saw him.

Toby's not much for birds - he prefers monkeys and lemurs and squirrels, small furry things with inquisitive faces. But he says, "Oh," then is silent for a long time before saying, in a terrible attempt at a bored voice, "Well, if you see any of my old friends around, say hi to them for me."

"I will," Sarah promises, and they go back to talking about school (science class apparently alternates between fascinating and stupid) before she says goodbye.

She goes back to the kitchen. The groceries are still in their bags. The cheese has reappeared on top of the grocery bags. There are teeth marks on it, as if someone tried to eat it without realizing it was still wrapped in plastic. The marks are not even enough to look human.

Sarah puts it away in its drawer anyway, then puts the kettle on for tea. She goes to the window again, while she waits for the water to boil. The owl's reappeared, this time on the tree directly outside the window.

This is a terrible decision. She's vulnerable, and alone, and she's still not sure she's not imagining half of this.

_Which way do you want to go?_ an echoing voice asks her in memory.

She made one choice when she was fifteen. Maybe it's time to make another choice, and see where she lands this time. _Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be…_

"I wish to have tea with the King of the Goblins," she says, and turns away from the window, back to the hissing kettle.


End file.
